CNN’s Biased Poll About the New York Mosque

President Obama did the right thing at first by essentially saying that he supported (or at least was not opposed) to the building of a mosque a few blocks away from “Ground Zero.”  But then, unfortunately, he attempted to distance himself from his remarks by saying that he had only meant to voice his support for freedom of religion and was not taking any stance on whether building a mosque there was the right thing to do.  This led CNN to publish an article titled “Critics say Obama’s message becoming ‘incoherent’.”  And, then, Senator Harry Reid took the political stance of saying that he does not think a mosque should be built there, thereby starting a probable trend of other Democrats distancing themselves from Obama’s first remarks.  (Can anyone imagine a time when politicians do what they think is right rather than do what they think will get them reelected?)

All of the people who are against the mosque are doing so without adequate facts to back them up.  The following facts paint a different story than the sound bites voiced by opponents of the mosque.  First, the mosque is blocks away from Ground Zero.  Second, there is an existing mosque that is about the same distance away.  Third, the proposed mosque is more than a mosque; it is planned to include a fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, bookstore, performing arts center and food court.  And, according to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, most importantly, the mosque’s organizers have “made clear that the whole point of the project is to provide a high-profile platform for mainstream, moderate Islam — and to stridently reject the warped, radical, jihadist worldview that produced the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001.”  Daisy Khan, one of the organizers, has said that “[the mosque] will have a real community feel, to celebrate the pluralism in the United States, as well as in the Islamic religion.  It will also serve as a major platform for amplifying the silent voice of the majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with extremist ideologies. It will counter the extremist momentum.”

So, the real fallacy of the opponents’ argument is that they equate the 9/11 terrorists with ALL Muslims.  They think that anything related to Islam (as opposed to the tiny subset of Muslims who happened to be terrorists) should be nowhere close to Ground Zero.

Many are quoting a CNN poll that showed 68% are opposed to the mosque.  But this is how the poll question was worded:

As you may know, a group of Muslims in the U.S. plan to build a mosque two blocks from the site in New York City where the World Trade Center used to stand.  Do you favor or oppose this plan?

68% said they were opposed and 29% said they were in favor.  But, as Eugene Robinson said in his column today, imagine how different the poll results might have been if the question was something along the lines of whether “a group of Americans” should be allowed to build “a center promoting moderate, peaceful Islam.”  It seems to me that the CNN poll is showing the same bias as the opponents of the mosque, that is, equating all terrorism carried out by a tiny number of Muslims with the entire (multi-billion) Muslim population.